17. (a) How did God not let himself be deprived of his chief vindicator by death? (b) How was Jesus then made far stronger than the Great Serpent Satan?

¹⁷ “Through his death” in an innocent way Jesus Christ showed that he was uncompromisingly at enmity with Satan the Great Serpent to the very death. He also vindicated the divine rulership of his heavenly Father Jehovah God as the One to whom all creatures in heaven and on earth, from the highest to the lowest, should be absolutely subject. Would the Almighty, Most High God leave his chief vindicator in the bonds of death and thus deprive himself of any further use of that faithful one? Not according to what Jehovah God had foretold when speaking to the serpent in the Garden of Eden. He had foretold that the wounding of the Seed of the “woman” would be merely a heel bruise, not like being bruised or crushed in the head. So the A]mighty God healed the wound by raising Jesus Christ from the dead on the third day, Nisan 16, of the year 33 C.E.

19. Why has all mankind not experienced emancipation before now, but what indicates that this is now near?

¹⁹ Likely many persons today will say: ‘If there is a Devil and if Jesus Christ died nineteen centuries ago to emancipate us from slavery to that Devil, why is it that all mankind has not experienced this emancipation before now? Why is it that all mankind does not feel itself emancipated today, but, instead, we find ourselves enslaved by a system of things the state of which gets worse and worse year after year?’ The reason why is that, as the Holy Bible indicates, the time has not yet come for the Promised Seed of God to ‘bruise the Serpent’s head,’ or, to “bring to nothing” Satan the Devil. However, that desirable time is very near now. If, back there in the first century, the Christian apostle Paul could write to fellow Christians in Rome, “The God who gives peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly,” this must be very near today, nineteen centuries later. (Romans 16:20)